PROGRAM NOTE

Genesis re-imagines the Biblical stories of creation through a triptych of poems by Ted Hughes, Richard Siken and Alec Derwent Hope. Like three panels of an altarpiece, the three tableaux are independent of one another but together draw parallels in the telling of a story. In this case, the trio is wholly dependent on the Book of Genesis to give it meaning, but each is a subversive exegesis of the stories and themes of birth, death, sin and obedience and disobedience and each posits a slight, but vital alternative to the traditional narrative that changes the outcome of the myth in ways that are sometimes insignificant (but poignant) and sometimes darkly different.

The outer movements of the triptych retell stories from the Bible. In Ted Hughes’ Lineage, the creation of the world is retold in a dark send-up of the genealogical lists found throughout the Old and New Testaments. Alec Derwent Hope’s Paradise Saved imagines a scenario where Adam does not partake of the fruit offered by Eve. The middle movement is a setting of Richard Siken’s Scheherazade from his brilliant, ecstatic and anxious book of poetry, Crush.

Lineage is declaimed with short, violent, unison motives reflecting the stark shock delivered by Hughes’ verse. As the work progresses, the motive expands in length and in harmonic content culminating on the word “Crow,” where the chorus launches into a devastating, visceral, slow descent ending in muttering.

The story of Scheherazade is obviously not found in Genesis. But Siken’s poem is replete with images of the Biblical Eden. Furthermore, the history of sacred music is replete with erotic interludes drawing parallels to sacred subjects: settings from the Song of Songs since the Fourteenth Century attest to this. Thus, in referencing Scheherazade, Siken reminds us that she wove tales for a thousand and one nights to assuage and seduce her captor, lover and would-be executioner: she wove her tales to fend off death. Siken’s lover (captor, murder?), addressing his lover (whose kiss always yields more apples), admits that love will ruin them. Indeed, Siken’s poem is addressed to a teller or tales. Originally, the model for Genesis was Schütz’s Musikalische Exequeim and while the expansive assemblage of a first movement was not used, the two remaining were used as reference points. The second movement, written for eight-part chorus is set, as in the Schütz, as though it were a motet. The third movement too emulates Schütz’s structure but also memorializes another composer, Fausto Romitelli.

In Paradise Saved separation is made audible:  the third movement is composed for two separated choirs. The antiphonal choir, composed of higher, all female voices sings a series of wordless, descending chromatic, chordal sighs against a chorale-chaconne sung by altos, tenors and basses narrating the non-fall of Hope’s proud Adam. Paired with Siken’s Scheherazade the works reflect a common theme of humankind’s futile attempts to defer death. In Siken’s case by filling weaving tales, in Hope’s by avoiding the cause altogether.  Hope’s Adam refuses to eat the fruit, thereby assuring his immortality. But his sinless Adam, justified and impotent, watches as God’s mercy bestows another helpmeet on his fallen Eve, his obedience seemingly overlooked, her disobedience craving and receiving companionship and mercy.

PRESS

“Matthew Barnson’s [work] was the highlight of the evening. The effect could only be described as searing.” (Stark Insider)

“Matthew Barnson provided an emotional roller-coaster, radiating electricity of frightening amperage. This is explosive music of high theater.” (artssf.com)

TEXT

I. Lineage

In the beginning was Scream
Who begat Blood
Who begat Eye
Who begat Fear
Who begat Wing
Who begat Bone
Who begat Granite
Who begat Violet
Who begat Guitar
Who begat Sweat
Who begat Adam
Who begat Mary
Who begat God
Who begat Nothing
Who begat Never
Never Never Never

Who begat Crow

Screaming for Blood
Grubs, crusts

Anything

Trembling featherless elbows in the nest’s filth

- Ted Hughes

II. Scheherazade

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake

and dress them in warm clothes again.

How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running

until they forgot that they are horses.

It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,

it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,

how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days

were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple

to slice into pieces.

Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means

we’re inconsolable.

Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.

These, our bodies, possessed by light.

Tell me we’ll never get used to it.

-Richard Siken

III. Paradise Saved

Adam, indignant, would not eat with Eve,
They say, and she was driven from his side.
Watching the gates close on her tears, his pride
Upheld him, though he could not help but grieve

And climbed the wall, because his loneliness
Pined for her lonely figure in the dust:
Lo, there were two! God who is more than just
Sent her a helpmeet in that wilderness.

Day after day he watched them in the waste
Grow old, breaking the harsh unfriendly ground,
Bearing their children, till at last they died;
While Adam, whose fellow God had not replaced,
Lived on immortal, young, with virtue crowned,
Sterile and impotent and justified.

- A.D. Hope